Rohan Dixit | Talks at Google

The last 10 years have seen the growing acceptance of mindfulness meditation in mainstream science. Hundreds of studies have now demonstrated quantifiable physiological effects of meditation on heart rhythms, stress, immune response and more. In fact, it appears the brain itself changes both during the act of meditation as well as after repeated practice.
Rohan Dixit will show you brainwave, heartbeat and breath sensors that can help you track your mind during your day. For example, breathing patterns are correlated with stress and, in fact, many forms of meditation encourage watching of the breath. A wearable respiration sensor that gives you feedback when you're stressed can be imagined as a technology-assisted meditation practice. The coming ubiquity of wearable sensors make opportunities for calm engineering, like this, potentially quite common; we'll show you the state of the field today.
The talk ends with a demo of BrainBot's new wearable device.
ABOUT ROHAN DIXIT
Rohan Dixit is a founder at BrainBot (www.brainbot.me) and a former neuroimaging researcher at the Harvard-MIT-MGH Martino's Center and Stanford University. In a search for the ultimate meaning of life, the universe and everything, Rohan quit his job and bought a one-way ticket to the Himalayas, where he lived with Tibetan monks for a year and recorded their brainwaves during meditation. This eventually led to a meditation app that uses a brainwave sensor, as well as a flower that blooms with your calm brainwaves. In summer and fall 2015, Rohan will be creating a variety of large art installations that react to your relaxed heartbeat, including a garden of 15 foot tall metal Lotuses and huge murals that encourage heart syncing between people.